Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

Have you ever found a shortcut that others couldn’t find? Solved a problem that confounded your family? Seen a way to make something work that wasn’t working before? Made a personal connection with someone who was out of reach to everyone else?

Few authors have had the kind of lasting impact and global reach that Seth Godin has had. In a series of now-classic books that have been translated into 36 languages and reached millions of readers around the world, he has taught generations of readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. In Linchpin, he turns his attention to the individual, and explains how anyone can make a significant impact within their organization.

This book is about love and art and change and fear. It’s about overcoming a multi-generational conspiracy designed to sap your creativity and restlessness. It’s about leading and making a difference and it’s about succeeding.

I found this book in the 10p bargain zone and I bought it as it looks like a nice self-help book that would keep me entertained in my lunch break. It did. It’s a fun book to read (among loads of serious others) and it’s a motivator booklet with loads of imperative demands asking you to get off your butt and do something about your life.

It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what’s good enough and start creating art that matters. Stop asking what’s in it for you and start giving gifts that change people. Then, and only then, will you have achieved your potential. For hundreds of years, the population has been seduced, scammed, and brainwashed into fitting in, following instructions, and exchanging a day’s work for a day’s you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must. I’m hoping you’ll stand up and choose to make a difference.

There’s my 10p motivation for the day!

The rules were written just over two hundred years ago; they worked for a long time, but no longer. It might take you more than a few minutes to learn the new rules, but it’s worth it.

This book was trying to sell me something. The text was addressed to me, the reader, and with every sentence I felt like I was on a Tupperware party where I would go home with the bowl of my dreams or with a new kitchen knife!

The first step is the most difficult, the step where you acknowledge that this is a skill, and like all skills, you can (and will) get better at it. Every day, if you focus on the gifts, art, and connections that characterize the linchpin, you’ll become a little more indispensable.

But didn’t the author know that if you make yourself indispensable you will never get a promotion? As you won’t be able to advance from your position as you are the very thing he is telling you to be: irreplaceable?

This is your opportunity. The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around. You reject whining about the economy and force yourself to acknowledge that the factory job is dead. Instead, you recognize the opportunity of becoming indispensable, highly sought after, and unique. If a Purple Cow is a product that’s worth talking about, the indispensable employee–I call her a linchpin–is a person who’s worth finding and keeping.

He’s selling..

At this point, I was slowly chuckling. This is a sales pitch! It is, it is! Repeated words, sentences that turn back on themselves, the flow of low-key word-hypnosis. The accent is put on the “you” – the reader. You are the direct marketing victim of this book. Oh, how happy I am I did not purchase the full-price book currently going for $14.99 on Amazon

The book goes on into listing problems – so many of them that surely one of them will apply to you and you will be compelled to keep reading, to see what the solution is. What is he selling? How can you make your life better? What’s the way out?

And you? Your resume sits in a stack next to plenty of other resumes, each striving to fit each like the other. Your business card and suit and approach to problems–all designed to fit in. You keep your head down and you work hard and you hope you get picked.

It takes a while, but the author does get to the point. When you are nearly screaming with enthusiasm, banging on your desk, desperate to hear or see it spelled out.

The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You’ll be rewarded. That’s the scam. Strong words, but true. You’ve been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner.

Nope, not there yet. But you are on the hook. You have invested some effort into this book and you want the reward. Where is it? The Instant Gratification Monkey in the brain demands it!

Of course you can do something that matters. I guess I’m wondering if you want to. There may be a voice in your head that is ready to announce that you can’t possibly do what I’m describing. You don’t have what it takes; you’re not smart enough or trained enough or (sheesh) gifted enough to pull this off.

This is turning into a tease. It’s telling me now I can’t hear the solution or maybe I’m dumb enough not to get it. Or maybe not talented enough. I paid the money for the book so I must a schmuck of some sorts. Figures! In the end he tells you that you need start making connections, oiling the right wheels, giving loads of gifts so people remember you and being born rich and famous does help:

There’s no doubt that environment still plays a huge role. The right teacher or the right family support or the accidents of race or birth location are still significant factors. But the new rules mean that even if you’ve got all the right background, you won’t make it unless you choose to.